A. Quinton — Mar. 13th 2018

Friend of the site John Dillard sent me this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it video ad for Google Cloud, featuring an animated werewolf transformation and a pertinent bit of college basketball trivia. It’s onscreen for less than two seconds but I think it’s a perfect transformation scene. The only way it could be improved is if the lycanthropic basketball player’s jersey number was “42” instead of “4”.

A. Quinton — Mar. 7th 2018

Growl is an upcoming board game where the point is to be a werewolf who infect as many villagers as possible. That’s the only win condition. At the end of the game you and every other player you’ve sufficiently bitten all literally growl to declare victory. Okay, yeah, you can also play as a human and try to rid your village of lycanthropy (and you can win by keeping at least one human alive until the end), but if you’re reading a site called Werewolf News, I think we all know which side you’re rooting for.

This card-based game was designed by Joey Vigour, features artwork by Rob Joseph, and comes out later this month. To get instant access to a printable version of the basic game system, you can sign up for a game release notification here. According to that page the first 500 copies of the game will be free, which seems too good to be true, but maybe get your email address in there just in case. I was never really a fan of the original Werewolf social game, so it’s nice to read positive reviews of this potential successor and see Joey playtesting it to a fine polish. I look forward to getting a copy of this whether it’s free or not!

4-7 players (up to 10 with more cards) all claim to be innocent villagers, but one of you is Wolf Zero, the original werewolf that intends on turning the whole town wolfy….

The deck of cards sits face-up in the middle of the table. One by one you take turns picking up the top card and giving it to whichever player you want. The cards can be a Bite (which brings you closer to becoming a wolf) or a Wound (which brings you closer to dead), or cards that cancel other cards. When a NIGHT card is revealed, the full moon comes out and werewolves and villagers get to pass cards anonymously, which is how the infection spreads and turns villagers into wolves. 3 Wounds kills either a human or a werewolf. 3 Bites turns a human into a werewolf, and only wolves can pass Bites at night.

When the deck is exhausted at the end of the third night, Wolf Zero begins to GROWL and slowly other wolves (even dead wolves) join the growl! If any humans are left alive, all humans (even dead ones!) win. If all the players who are still alive are growling, all wolves win!

A. Quinton — Mar. 4th 2018

This week’s art is by Kosse, a freelance illustrator and occasional hyena from France. Despite some uncertainty in the tags and the potential contextual significance of a Neon Genesis Evangelion quote that goes over my uninitiated head, I think this fellow is a werewolf. A pious werewolf, which is one of the most dangerous kinds, as the residents of Tarker’s Mills well know. His proper posture and rosary aren’t enough to convince me that he’s got the welfare of his flock in mind.

A. Quinton — Mar. 3rd 2018

If you answered “no” but you like great audio storytelling, may I suggest jumping in at the setup episode for this current arc? It’s a long-running actual play roleplaying podcast by a family of funny, thoughtful and inclusive writers/actors. If you start at the link above, no prior knowledge of the show is required.

After the conclusion of their years-long main arc, “Balance”, the McElroy boys (Justin, Travis and Griffin of MBMBaM fame) and their dad (Clint) are taking turns running short 5- or 6-episode campaigns as a way to narrow down their next long-form story. This is the second-to-last mini-arc, and as much as I’m looking forward to a longer adventure, each of these has been superb (Clint even made me like “tights and fights” superheroes with “Commitment“).

If you are familiar with The Adventure Zone, then you probably already know that Travis’s new arc “Dust” just started, and it’s high in lycanthrope content. The western / supernatural crime procedural continues TAZ’s trend of storytelling excellence. Griffin plays Errol Ryehouse, a permanently-half-transformed werewolf. He’s an excitable politician who leans into his semi-lycanthrope status with enthusiasm as he strives to protect his neighbourhood from crime, vampires, and bad zoning laws. There’s also Gandy Dancer (an orphaned magic user played by Clint) and Augustus Parsons (an asshole and cashew magnate ghost played by Justin). The story so far involves a murder investigation that starts at midnight and which must be concluded by 8 a.m. the next morning, lest the werewolves and vampires of the territory take matters into their own hands.

Trying to enumerate why The Adventure Zone deserves your attention – especially if you’re not usually into roleplaying podcasts, roleplaying, or podcasts – is too big a job for me to tackle in a single blog post. The show packs a ton of story into each episode, making it hard to provide an overview that remains both comprehensive and interesting to people who aren’t already listening. All I can do is recommend it as ardently and sincerely as any other thing I’ve posted about on this web site in the past 10 years: please listen to The Adventure Zone.

To close out this post, here’s a tiny sample of Twitter fan art depicting Errol, Gandy and Augustus. #TheZoneCast fans are prolific (there were over 40 pieces of art of these characters posted in the eight days since the arc started) and I love popping into that hashtag every now and then to see how characters are being portrayed.

#theZonecast I’m so stoked for the The Adventure Zone: Dust arc! A short, Western-set story with a supernatural cast is a greaaaaat jumping in point if you’ve been shopping for a new podcast! pic.twitter.com/Kcm5rKVXhO

Craig J. Clark — Mar. 1st 2018

I’m hopping a bit off the beaten path with this month’s Full Moon Feature, but with Early Man now in theaters, I can’t think of a better time to watch a cheese-loving inventor and his long-suffering pooch grapple with The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Made in 2005, it was the second feature for Aardman Animations after 2000’s Chicken Run and the first big-screen adventure for their signature characters, Wallace and Gromit. Directed by their creator Nick Park and Steve Box, the film amply illustrates the dangers of hooking yourself up to a Mind Manipulator-omatic and then plugging it into a BunVac filled with pesky rabbits and trying to brainwash them into not liking vegetables under the light of the full moon. There’s just so many ways something like that can go so, so wrong, as man and his best friend alike soon learn.

How it comes to that is simple: In the lead-up to their town’s annual Giant Vegetable Competition, everyone has signed up with Anti-Pesto, Wallace (voiced as always by Peter Sallis) and Gromit’s high-tech “Humane Pest Control” service. Their non-lethal methods especially impress animal lover Lady Campanula Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter), who has to fend off aggressive blueblood Victor Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes), who resents the competition. However, after Wallace’s attempt at bunny brainwashing backfires, he literally creates a monster that is identified by Reverend Hedges (Nicholas Smith, Mr. Rumbold from Are You Being Served?) as the titular beast, carrotus apetitus giganticus. No points for guessing who it turns out to be.

Park and Box and their co-writers Mark Burton and Bob Baker pack as many vegetable puns as they can into the proceedings (under the headline “Night of Vegetable Carnage!” there’s the delicious subhead “Anti-Pesto Fail to Turnip in Time”), and they also managed to smuggle a few naughty jokes past the MPAA. (“Beware the moon,” indeed.) Even better, they work in numerous allusions to classic horror films, with my favorite being when the beast is vanquished and it returns to human form with the aid of a series of lap dissolves, just like in the old Lon Chaney, Jr. movies. I know that’s hardly extraordinary considering the entire film is stop-motion animated, but the gesture is appreciated.

A. Quinton — Feb. 28th 2018

I only read a handful of comics anymore, and Pure of Heart is at the top of that list.

Human-werewolf relationships are always tricky, especially when the werewolf is heir to the throne. After years married to the prince, Penelope falls for another human – shame he’s a bit of a loser. Things get messy when they find themselves embroiled in the midst of royal intrigue, and dealing with an unplanned pregnancy. Can they overcome danger and their own issues to give the baby a chance? Pure of Heart is a comic about aristocratic werewolves, human weakness and scheming siblings.

Pure of Heart is free to read, but $1+ Patrons get the full experience; with color pages several weeks before everyone else, high-res PDFs, plus a shedload of other perks, there’s no better way to support the comic. I’m halfway to my first goal, at which point Pure of Heart will become twice weekly, so every dollar helps!

The comic’s creator, HamsterToybox, has been drawing great werewolves (and other things) for years. Just look at this big jerk! It’s wonderful to see her idiosyncratic lycanthropes coupled with captivating serialized storytelling.

She’s not kidding about the shedload of Patreon perks, either. I jumped in at the “get a cameo in the strip” level and was very pleased with the result (here I am getting my coffee knocked out of my hands) and the behind-the-scenes art and coloured pages are such a pleasure to see. Patreon support, though recommended, is not a requirement to enjoy Pure of Heart – just visit pureofheartcomic.com.

My thanks to Pure of Heart for sponsoring Werewolf News for the month of March!

A. Quinton — Feb. 23rd 2018

Roald Dahl’s collection of delightfully messed-up fairy tales has been adapted from a book into two half-hour animated short films directed by Jakob Schuh Jan Lachauer and narrated by Dominic West. The meta-story surrounding the two short films stars a wolf (potentially Big and/or Bad), which is werewolf-adjacent enough to be posted here.

The characters designs are fantastic – a kind of mashup of Quentin Blake’s illustrations and Aardman-style 3D figurines. Lupine bias aside, I love the variety of depictions the wolf (or wolves) have.

Revolting Rhymes was produced by Magic Light Pictures (London), animated by Magic Light Pictures (Berlin) and Triggerfish Animation (Cape Town), and aired on PBS in the United States. The first episode, featuring a radical reinterpretation of Red Riding Hood and Snow White’s stories, is currently in the running for an Academy Award.

A. Quinton — Feb. 21st 2018

Earlier this week, digital sculptors Maria Panfilova and Rodion Vlasov fired up ZBrush to stage a “friendly sculpt battle”. The goal: to see who could better interpret an illustration of a feasting werewolf by Frank Cho. The results posted on their Instagram feeds seem to clear to me: everyone wins. Literally everyone on the planet, except for the owner of that gnawed-upon arm, who has lost a different, more fundamental battle.

Maria Panfilova

Maria is a 3D character artist from Moscow. You can see more of her work, which ranges from fantasy creatures to lifelike realizations of scenes from Disney films, at ArtStation. Her interpretation of werewolf dinnertime is very animal, with an emphasis on the musculature and hunched posture. This is a creature that’s eating quickly, protecting its meal from potential attackers. The tension and the way it’s framed in the renders below makes me think of Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son.

Rodion Vlasov

Rodion is a CG artist and musician from Yaroslavl. He’s also on ArtStation, and his creations are more in the fantasy-horror vein. That’s reflected in his version of Werewolf Feasting, which depicts a lycanthrope with fur that’s matted, almost tentacle-like, and a more relaxed pose, as if to say “yeah, I ate this guy, and no matter how fast you run, you’re next.” Rodion also posted two time-lapsevideos of his work on this that are available on his YouTube channel.

A. Quinton — Feb. 19th 2018

“Monster Family” is animated family film of the sort where the trailer features a lovingly-animated fart joke. As far as I can tell, there is no way to watch it.

When I saw the character art I was sure it was a spin-off from the Hotel Transylvania series, but nope – it’s based on David Safier’s book “Happy Family”, which was then somehow turned into the premise for a 4D cinema/ride at a cave-based theme park called Wookey Hole, which was then – because this is how these things work – expanded into a feature film. It follows the misadventures of a shitty family who get turned into monsters because Dracula hates them for some reason. I’m posting about it because the boy becomes a werewolf who looks like Rhea Butcher.

This British-German production features the voices of Emily Watson, Nick Frost, Jessica Brown Findlay, Celia Imrie, Catherine Tate, and Jason Isaacs. The trailer and the airport scene that follows it seem to contain dialogue animation matching a non-English script – German, maybe, or perhaps Brazilian Portuguese, for the sake of the film’s premiere, which was in Brazil. It arrived in American theatres on February 9th 2018, and now doesn’t seem to be playing anywhere, nor is it available for purchase. It does not exist. Did it ever exist? Or did Genndy Tartakovsky have a bad dream that we all shared?

Wookey Hole, if you’re looking for another attraction to turn into a feature film, I have a suggestion.

A. Quinton — Feb. 18th 2018

I like the werewolf design in this short animation by illustrator Canfeng Chen, completed as part of some coursework he was doing in 2016. But who is this werewolf? Well, I’ve included an image of one of the other two characters in the animation as a clue.